Cycling on Sao Tome,

by Gregor Heinric

Sir / Madam:

I recently noticed a quite good WEB-entry on S.Tome
residing on your WEB pages.

(i) You might wish to add an information that a symposium
on STP was held at Cologne University (Germany) on
April 7, 1995. All papers presented, mostly in German,
some in Portuguese, were recently published in "ABP
- Zeitschrift zur portugiesischsprachigen Welt"
No.1, 1996 (Frankfurt : IKO)(ISSN 0947-1723)

(ii) Below please find a travel and country report that
I wrote and that might be of interest to you.
Kind regards

G. Heinrich

********************************************

Cycling on Sao Tome :

Land of the First Plantations and of the Last Slaves

(by Gregor HEINRICH*)

Flying out to the West African microstate of Sao Tome
and Principe is not that easy. Not only are the two
islands not shown on most living-room globes, but more
often than not even seasoned travelers seem to be
oblivious of a place which is roughly no more than
twice the size of Andorra. Independent since 1975,
the republic is now showing signs of waking from its
latest Rip Van Winkle slumber.

*

The Airbus from Lisbon has deposited its passengers
on the apron in the hot Sao Tome night. On the small
baggage carousel - the minimum an airport requires
to qualify as "international" - the bicycle
completes a quick circuit, eliciting incredible amazement.
The customs officials note down the make and ask whether
it will be staying. Even before it has left the airport,
people are already bidding. Not that there are no bikes
on the island; but the recently imported and ever
lovingly polished Chinese models are heavy and have
no gears. Most of the cycles are still new and in
the local currency, the dobra, would fetch the equivalent
of about US$ 100, four times what a teacher earns
in a month. On a bike you are not simply restricted
to riding around the small capital, with its old,
generously laid-out avenidas that have with time become
bumpy and on which you rarely meet a car; in particular
the island's main sites, the old plantations, known
as rocas, are just a leisurely ride away.

It's only 12 km from the town up to the coffee hill,
the Roca Monte Cafe, the only coffee plantation still
in operation, at an altitude of 700 m. But you may
well find yourself taking a whole day to get there.
And when you do, it's worth riding and pushing your
bike a little further, to a hotel with a fantastically
clear view and, just beyond, in the rain forest, one
of the many waterfalls on the island.

The subsequent descent is terrifyingly quick. >From
Sao Tome the road climbs slowly to Trindade, 7 km away.
Along the route, the Portuguese-built houses increasingly
give way to the traditional abodes, built on stilts
to protect them from the tropical downpours. Most
of the people get around on foot, smartly dressed if
on the way to work or, like many children, barefoot
if they belong to the not so well-off.

At streams there are always women busy doing the family
laundry. The soap they use is manufactured with coconut
oil and soda on the island, one of the few domestic
consumer products. In the grass along the banks, I
discover, as previously seen on many a torso, not only
faded Michael Jackson T-shirts but also new garments
sporting the image of Bill and Hillary Clinton. What
initially appears to be skilful propaganda proves to
be merely old throw-away campaign garb which, via
many middlemen, ended up in Libreville in Gabon. There
the shirts are subsequently bought up by retailers,
with dollars obtained on the market square in Sao Tome
from foreigners and bundled to the mainland in small
boats.

Trindade itself may be just a hamlet in our eyes, but
it is still the second-largest town on Sao Tome. A
parish was founded here as early as 1508, and when
Dutch pirates stormed the town of Sao Tome around
1640, causing much destruction, Trindade was even a
diocesan town for a year. Today the island's President
has his residence on a hill overlooking the place.
The blue-painted house, with its wonderful view of
the ocean and the small island's peaks, which rise
to above 2,000 m, was once occupied by the Governor
of the colonial power of Portugal.

Beyond Trindade, the road leads through the tiny settlement
of Batepa. Like all the towns and villages, it has
a small open festival arena. As I rode past, the teachers
were being taught mathematical set theory on the stage
and, alongside, in an improvised classroom, small children
were brooding over big numbers. The school building
proper was being freshly painted.

In the festival arena itself I am addressed by Felipe.
From there he guides me through more than just small
fields, past medicinal and magical herbs, about each
of which he has a tale to tell. We meet Pedro, the
palm-wine extractor, who each day draws about five
litres of sweet juice from the tops of his palms.
He has taken a lease on ten of the trees. For three
months he can extract the juice which - through fermentation
in the open air - becomes palm wine, known as vim pema.

Felipe then also takes me to see his uncle. The torture
scars on his legs are vestiges of the electric shocks
endured during the 1953 uprising. At the time, the
rumor arose that the colonialists wanted to force
the native population into working on the land. The
rebellion was bloodily suppressed: some 1,000 blacks
and one white man fell victim to the "Massacre
of Batepa".

**

A much gentler ride is afforded by the barely perceptible
gradient of the road leading up to Guadalupe, to some
of the old plantations which in former times were the
source of the country's wealth, bestowing schools,
roads, water and health care. Admittedly, it was not
colonialist sweat which soaked the earth in that period.
Nevertheless, there is no denying the beauty of the
lordly mansions of these nostalgically dilapidated
estates, with their whitewashed columns, houses in
blue or yellow against a tropical backcloth, a lasting
reminder of injustices which were proclaimed to the
world so loudly that on many a plantation the owners
responded with the construction of almost palatial
hospitals.

***

***

Meanwhile, we have reached Roca Bela Vista. Built at
the turn of the century, the big pink two-storey house
towers over the surrounding plantations. A balcony
running round the whole house not only enabled the
owners who lived here to step out into the fresh air
but also provided them with a vantage point from which
to observe the work going on in the courtyards and
what was happening in front of the other buildings.
In the immediate vicinity stood the rather more modest
buildings of the foremen; and a bit further on, little
better than stables, the quarters of the workers and
their families.

As with every other major roca, the village-like complex
includes a church, a school and a hospital: a world
in its own right. Today, barely twenty years after
the withdrawal of the colonial power, many of the
island's old plantation buildings stand rotting. The
young people on the roca have little interest in their
state of disrepair. They find life here boring, dreaming
of the for us seemingly near but for them oh so distant
capital of Sao Tome and complaining that their last
football has burst and they have nothing more to play
with. There is also extreme poverty. Far beyond the
pretty buildings of the roca, in the workers' districts,
where a mother is delousing her child, a handful of
tomatoes on a window sill are ripening in the sun,
the pots over the fireplaces are empty and even women
washing their laundry don't represent a photographic
idyll, two babies were offered to me for purchase.

The administrators running the rocas are having difficulty
finding buyers for their cocoa. Until the collapse
of the Soviet empire, almost the island's entire cocoa
production went to East Germany; there was no quality
control. The economists followed the ideas of the Cuban,
Soviet and East German advisers. To dry the cocoa,
much valuable wood was thoughtlessly burnt. Now things
are to change. Special trees for firewood are being
planted on the roca. The 70 kg sacks with better-quality
cocoa are today shipped to Libreville. But many a concern
is still incapable of covering its costs.
*****

Riding southwards along the coast past small beaches
on which the fishermen have

stacked their dug-out canoes in rows, you first come
to Santana. On many of the vessels, outboard motors
have replaced the old small sails. Some 10 km further
on, two giant satellite dishes protrude through the
coastal palms. Bill the Texan is the "antenna
man" at Voice of America, which after unrest
in Liberia has taken out a thirty-year lease on an
extensive stretch of land here. Both satellite dishes
are only provisional, says Bill. "Back there we're
building two really big antennae, and with them we'll
be able to beam radio and TV into West Africa accurately
at any time."

Otherwise there is only one domestic radio station.
You notice that Sao Tome is not a reggae country.
The landlord of the small Ostramar restaurant, for
instance, prefers romantic Brazilian love songs on
cassette; apart from that, the radio and the discos
play a lot of music from the Cape Verde Islands and
by the few home-grown bands.

They have problems getting guitar strings, relates
Vicente, the guitarist in the group Africa Negra, after
the festival in the parque, a meeting-point where
many celebrations and concerts are held. Instruments
and equipment are acquired only through having connections,
in Europe or Gabon, he says. In the town there's no
specialist shop, and the stuff is expensive too. On
the radio you can sometimes hear even jazz, a musical
donation from France. Local radio is too impoverished.

Voice of America set up its hypermodern transmission
boosters right next to the old ones of Radio Nacional.
On the flat spit of land on which the antennae stand,
salt used to be extracted in former times. Not far
from there, the Chinese attempted to start up a rice
project. They did not, however, take into account
that the local menfolk feared that they would lose
their manhood if they had to work with their legs
in water. The project failed. Rice has long since been
imported, as is, surprisingly, most of the food. Even
during periods of economic prosperity, when the country
was flourishing and bringing in record revenues for
its colonial masters, apparently no efforts were made
to lay down the basis for self-sufficiency in food.

But in the meantime, eleven aid organisations have set
up agencies on the island, and advisers are constantly
flying in and out. Marinho, a Portuguese businessman
I meet on the way back from a day trip, has another
interest in the island. He settled here a few months
ago. "Here you have peace, here it's paradise,"
he says; it is his intention to set up a secure half-way
centre for trade with West Africa: "the African
continent is close, a big market, but it's troubled."

The inhabitants of Sao Tome themselves have put their
hopes in tourism. Although the island cannot survive
without cocoa, according to the President, with nothing
but cocoa San Tome would collapse. However, what they
are interested in is not mass tourism, people in search
of a quick tan, but ecotourism. The town's old fort
today houses a museum. Amazing items from the ecclesiastical
history of the island are to be found there, along
with furniture from the old roca mansions as they used
to be, including ceramic Art Nouveau water filters.

And the future? Will it just be a repetition of historical
patterns? Riding along, you always see curious faces.
It's worth stopping, to experience first-hand what
hope is. What was it that the people of Sao Tome say
again? "Sao Tome sa glavi" - Sao Tome is
beautiful. And where there is beauty, there is hope.